


A Change Will Do You Good

by xsleepylilgeekyx



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Body hate, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Finding Identities, Gen, Insecurities, Post-Endgame, Pre-Relationship, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is a Gift, hair cutting, reflections of the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21629392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsleepylilgeekyx/pseuds/xsleepylilgeekyx
Summary: Bucky felt the tears leak from his eyes, his whole body shaking underneath the now-cold water stream.He was tired.Tired of fighting.Tired of trying to redeem himself.Tired of everything.Bucky Barnes was extremely tired.~~~~~Bucky Barnes reflects of the things he hates about himself and loses it until Sam comes home and talks him through it, using old skills in hopes of helping the ex-assassin start his journey in rediscovering who Bucky Barnes through the events of changing.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 85





	A Change Will Do You Good

**Author's Note:**

> I think I've been working on this for like a month, but like, writer's block is a thing. But, I hope you enjoy!

Toes curled against the white ceramic flooring as the hot water pooled at the bottom of the tub haven fell from the metallic overhead, droplets trickling down his skin. Flesh hand was balled up into a fist so tight he watched the color drain from it before he leaned his head back, letting the water droplets soak his hair before stepping back more, sighing, as the water rolled down his face.

Bucky let out another sigh as he leaned his head forward, eyes still squeezed close and sucked in on his bottom lip. He unclenched his fist, flexing his fingers open and close, opening his eyes up and bringing the hand up to wipe the water out of his face. Bucky dragged his hand slowly down his face, feeling the scruffiness of his unshaven face beneath his fingertips.

He grabbed at the bottle that read shampoo and started to lather it into his hair, dragging both flesh and vibranium fingers through the locks that fell limply to his shoulders. He continued the same motions before he realized he’d been shampooing for more than three minutes; the air conditioner whirled, pulling him from his thoughts, and started to continue the rest of his shower.

Sam would curse every time the air vent whirled because it startled him every single time.

Sam was gone from the apartment they shared at the moment.

He had stepped out of their apartment about an hour ago, telling Bucky that he was going to see his sister, Sarah, for the first time since they got home.

Home.

Bucky laughed at the thought.

He hasn’t been able to stay in a place he could actually consider a home.

He doesn’t even remember what it was like to actually consider something a home.

Bucky thought he could’ve considered Wakanda a home.

He had like Wakanda and he started to think he was safe there.

Then Thanos happened.

He could remember being in Wakanda, tending to his goats while the little kids watched him and asked him to play games with them until the King himself approached him with a mission. Next moment he knew he was charging into the battle with a new arm, fighting as he’s done for the last century, until he turned to dust in front of an old friend.

The air vent kicked again, the annoying whirl pulling him from his thoughts. Bucky breathed deeply through his mouth, feeling his heart beat against his chest. He felt as if his throat was swelling and he couldn’t breathe. Dropping to the ceramic flooring, he pulled his legs up to his chest, burying his face in his knees.

He remembered being confused when he woke up on the Wakandan soil, in the same spot that he had fell; confused on why it had only felt like he’d fallen asleep. He was greeted with the sorcerer called Doctor Strange telling him that it had been five years and it was time to fight.

He had truly thought his fighting was over.

He thought he was finally able to die.

To stop fighting for good.

But he was brought back along with half of the world.

Bucky just gave in that his fighting was never going to be over.

He was never going to actually be home.

Hydra was not what a home was.

Cryo-Freeze was not what a home was.

The small hide out in Bucharest was not home.

He really wanted to think that where he was with Sam was going to be home. The small two bedroomed apartment that Shield had given to them as a safe place until life could be sorted back to normal, if it could ever be back to normal. Bucky was truly terrified to think of this place as home. He only wondered how long it would be until something else screwed up.

His last true feeling of a home was in 1943 Brooklyn when he was a 26 year old that got drafted into the war; a war that he would never return from.

Bucky felt the tears leak from his eyes, his whole body shaking underneath the now-cold water stream.

He was tired.

Tired of fighting.

Tired of trying to redeem himself.

Tired of everything.

Bucky Barnes was extremely tired.

Bucky breathed heavily as he shot his head up towards the ceiling, heart thumping faster and faster as he threw his vibranium hand back, wincing as it clanged against the metal dial as he tried to turn the water off. He tried catching his breath, resting the back of his neck against the shower walls. He didn’t even realize how cold he was until the air conditioning vent whirled again.

He took a deep breath before pulling himself of the bathtub floor and pulled the shower curtain to the side, grabbing his towel and began to dry himself off. He hissed loudly as he toweled himself off, wincing as he pressed the cotton against the part of his shoulder where the skin met metal. He had let water hit it too long so it made the skin sore and sensitive.

Bucky looked down at the reddened area and sighed, pulling his lips to a flat line as he stared at the laces of silver that still took home in his arm. Most of it was gone, thanks to Princess Shuri, but there were just some pieces that couldn’t be taken out.

He hated his arm.

He appreciates all the work the Wakandian’s put into making the vibranium one.

But he hates it.

There’s not much that he doesn’t hate about himself.

Bucky wrapped the towel around his waist and made his way towards his bedroom, shivering at the cool air hitting his body but disregarded going to turn the heat up. The apartment was extremely quiet and Bucky hated it because the quiet always made him get into his head. Which, he just pushed aside because he could already tell this was not going to be a good night.

Bucky pulled a pair of boxers from the dresser, along with a pair of sweatpants that were folded in the basket that sat in the corner of his room. Sam had done his laundry a few days ago but he just didn’t have the feeling to actually put them up. Quickly he slipped the articles of clothing before he went to get the sweater out of his closet.

He groaned as he flicked his hand through the shirts, not finding the item he wanted. He had multiple different shirts and sweaters hung up but he was wanting his specific blue sweater that he liked the most. Bucky slid door shut harshly, wincing at the sound of the wood hitting against the framing.

He wondered if Sam had got it mixed up in his own clothing so he started off towards Sam’s bedroom that was across the hall. Bucky saw Sam’s clothes basket sitting on his bed and hummed softly as he spotted the blue sweater in the basket.

Bucky smiled, running his flesh hand over the material. Feeling the soft cotton beneath his fingertips. As he turned to head back out he caught a glance of his entire body in Sam’s full length mirror that Bucky hated so much.

For once, Bucky just stopped and stared in the mirror. Something he always tries to avoid doing. Knowing that if he were to linger a moment too long that he would possibly lose it. He hated looking at himself in the mirror because for the longest time he never knew what he looked like. He had learned to fix himself with nothing in front of him.

Sometimes he thought it was best he didn’t know what he looked like.

His face was sunken in. His unshaved face hid it for the most part, but he noticed the dent in his cheeks as he clenched his jaw. Dark circles made home underneath his eyes; the once sparkling blue that every gal in the forties adored was turned to nothing more than a blank pale gaze. Bucky licked his cracked lips.

His eyes traveled downwards to his body.

Bucky knew that he was fit back in the day when he was with his Howling Commandos because it was mandatory. He was fit, not by choice, from his time in Siberia. Bits and pieces of memories from his training soared through his mind as he squeezed his eyes shut. He was buff. He had six-pack abs. A v-line down from his hips. Everything a man could strive for.

But he didn’t care.

All he cared about was the rips and tears that his eyes danced about on his skin.

A three inch slash just above his right hip from training in Siberia, skin pierced by the knife of his trainer.

Another slash right above his belly button, also from Siberia, but it wasn’t as deep as the one above his hip.

He knew there was more on his back. So he turned, eyes scanning the mirror for the view.

Three scars scattered all across his back. All the same width but were crossed across one another. He remembered it. The whip being smacked against him, the feeling of the air on broken skin as they beat him. The dark red strokes adorned the canvas of his back with nothing but horrid memories of his nightmare of a life.

Last but not least.

Bucky turned back and looked at the scars that lined across his shoulder as the metal was embedded in his skin. He didn’t care for the scars that were from his body healing to attach to the metal. It was the jagged lines that came out towards his neck and pecks. Barely even an inch long in width.

Bucky placed his flesh finger tips to the lines, dragging them down the familiar path, remembering as he sat in his cell, desperately scratching at his arm. Begging to himself that if he tried hard enough he could get the silver arm off. He didn’t want it. He remembered sitting there, crying in pain as blood poured from the wounds. He just wanted the arm gone. But when he woke up all he had was dried blood underneath his fingernails.

Bucky could feel his heart beat pounding in his chest, gulping, and looked back up at himself. His hair was stuck to his neck and his back. Parts of the drying hair fell in front of his face, covering his eyes and he clenched his hands into a fist.

The hair.

The Winter Soldier’s hair.

James Buchanan Barnes always wore his hair short and styled nicely. Even in the Great Depression, he always looked nice and put together. As he was once known lucky to come from a lineage of money. He was always clean faced. Nice clothes. Short hair, parted or slicked back.

But The Winter Soldier was different.

Any article he had read. Any history buck he had found. Anything he could find said different.

The Winter Soldier had shoulder length brown hair. Eyes hidden behind bulletproof goggles and face hid behind the muzzle. But his hair was something that was always shown in pictures and videos in the documentaries he had watched, trying to see what damage he had caused the world. Everyone would talk about the way he wore his hair.

He hated it.

He did not look like the James Buchanan Barnes he once was.

He continued to look like The Winter Soldier.

The most notorious assassin the world ever knew. A man everyone feared was going to take their lives since his first appearance in the mid-50s. The murderer of John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana and the Starks. The man who left people parentless, or even in the worst cases, childless. The picture perfect symbol of Hydra.

He was not him.

He can’t be him anymore.

No more.

No more.

No more.

Bucky couldn’t breathe.

He dropped the sweater and stormed out of Sam’s room, stumbling over his own feet until he reached the kitchen. He could feel the tears filling his eyelids, burning and begging to be released as he pulled drawer after drawer out until he found what he needed. His fingers folded over the metal blades as he stumbled towards the bathroom, hitting the wall as his body almost gave way.

The steam had subsided along with the condensation on the mirror and Bucky practically fell into the corner of the sink, groaning as the countertop collided with his ribs. He released and pulled himself back up, shaking ridiculously as he looked at himself with tear filled eyes.

Seeing the brokenness of himself.

A man out of time.

He placed hair between the blades of the scissors, watching as his hands shook. A tear sliding down his cheek as he closed the handle, hearing the soft snip and seeing the chunk of brown fall to the tiled flooring.

Bucky lost it.

He continued to snip piece after piece as his body shuddered with his cries. He cursed out as he angrily slashed at the long locks. He couldn’t handle it anymore. He hated it. He hated everything. He hated himself. He hated everything he’d done. Bucky coughed as he cried, snipping jaggedly and it was all he heard.

Sam had entered the apartment with a smile on his face, very content with his catching up with his sister. He was humming along to the voice in his head as he closed the door behind him and kicked off his shoes, heading towards the kitchen to put the leftovers he brought for Bucky in the fridge.

That’s when he heard it.

A loud string of coughs and a heart breaking cry along with a thud.

Sam quickly dropped the food onto the table and sprinted towards where the cries were coming from. He had heard Bucky cry before, in the times he comforted him from a nightmare, but never had he heard this raw of a cry come from the man he lived with.

Sam pushed open the bathroom door and saw the clumps of brown hair pooling on the floor and turned to see Bucky curled up against the side of the bathtub. His head was in his knees and he was shirtless; Bucky had never been without a shirt in front of Sam and Sam now noticed the welting scars and slashes across his back. Bucky held a pair of scissors in his hand.

“What the hell?” He yelled out, dropping down to his knees and plying open the super soldiers flesh hand from its grip to the scissors, throwing them to the side. He rested back on his heels as he stared at the man in front of him. Bucky’s left hand was placed on his head and Sam noticed the jagged lengths of hair on Bucky’s head. He whispered softly, “Man.”

Sam swallowed hard, looking back at the different piles of what used to be Bucky’s hair and back to the man who was curled against the tub, body shaking with tears. He reached out, placing a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, just above where metal met skin. “Hey.” He said, “It’s me. It’s Sam.” Bucky continued to shake, “I’m here. You can talk to me.”

Sam pulled his hand back knowing that sometimes Bucky didn’t like to be touched but felt a grip on his wrist of Bucky’s vibranium hand before feeling Bucky crash his body into Sam’s, forehead resting on Sam’s collar. Sam cleared his throat and shifted, pulling Bucky closer to him. He placed a hand on Bucky’s back, dragging his fingers up and down his back softly, “I’m here Bucky. I’m not going anywhere.”

He didn’t know how long it was that he was holding Bucky, still too caught up in what he had heard come from this man and the sight he had seen.

“I couldn’t-,” Bucky coughed, “I couldn’t do it.”

Sam leaned back, looking down at Bucky, “Couldn’t do what?”

“I can’t be him anymore.” Bucky responded, “I can’t- I can’t look like him anymore. I just- I just fucking can’t!”

Bucky didn’t need to explain to Sam who he was talking about. “What made you do this?” Sam could feel Bucky’s breathing evening out, but feeling the stifle of the breaths he took. “Did something happen?”

“I was showering-,”

“Finally.” Sam couldn’t help it but Bucky laughed and that sound had never sounded so good. “I’m sorry. Continue.”

Bucky let out a soft laugh again, “I was showering and I- I don’t know what happened. Honestly. I- I just couldn’t- I just couldn’t stop thinking of everything… everything that has happened. I- I thought I was going to go insane.” He explained, “I’m pretty sure I had a panic attack in the shower.”

It hurt Sam to hear that, knowing that he wasn’t here to help Bucky when this started.

“But I was looking for my blue sweater and I- uh,” Bucky sniffled, “I thought it might got switched up so I went to your room to get it, and uh, that- that damn mirror.” Bucky pulled back from Sam, dropping his head back against the side of the tub, “I just- I just noticed everything wrong with me.”

“There’s-,”

“Don’t give me that bullshit phrase.” Bucky responded as he looked Sam straight in the eyes. “I’m fucked up. I’m not blind.” He swallowed hard, looking down at the pair of scissors that Sam had taken from him, “I had just wondered… Sometimes I just wish I would’ve died when I fell from that train.”

Sam felt his heart skip a beat at what Bucky had just said, “Y’know,” He gulped, “When my wingman Riley died. I always wished it was me instead of him. Wished he got to live out his life rather than me.”

Bucky pulled his lips into a thin line, “I just wish I knew what I had done to deserve this.”

“You didn’t do anything.” Sam told him, “You didn’t have a choice when you got drafted. You sure as hell didn’t have a choice in getting experimented on by Hydra. Nothing you did as… him… was you.” Sam licked his lips, “There were two victims in those situations. The person in front of the gun and the person pulling the trigger.”

Bucky closed his eyes and Sam watched the tear fall, “I try to avoid mirrors because when I look at myself I just see the murderer that he is.” Sam watched Bucky clench his fists, “I don’t see who I was. I don’t think I ever will. I’m not the Bucky I was in the forties. I don’t even know who I am now.” He took a deep breath, “The hair is what got me. For years people didn’t know my face, but they knew my hair. So I just… I just lost it.”

“And you took a pair of kitchen scissors to your head?”

Bucky nodded, looking at the ground, “It’s that bad huh?”

“We’ll it’s definitely not good.”

Bucky laughed, running his flesh hand over the hair, feeling the different lengths, “I just couldn’t be him anymore. I’m not like him anymore.”

“Things are going to hurt you Bucky.” Sam says, “It’s just one of those situations where you have to grow in realization that you can overcome what you had done and what you once were. No, not everything is going to be easy. You’ve been through hell and back, and drug through hell even more. You aren’t the man from the forties. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be someone new. I mean, hell, it is 2024, you can try to find yourself again.”

“Thank you Sam.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” Sam said with a smile, “A different look can go different ways. So, get up and sit on the toilet lid. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Bucky took the hand that Sam had extended for him and sat down on the lid and watched as Sam left, only to reappear with a black container. Sam grabbed a towel from the rack and draped it over Bucky’s bare shoulders before pulling out what Bucky recognized as an electric razor.

“Why should I trust you with fixing my hair?”

“Because you decided to chop your hair off with a pair of kitchen scissors,” Sam responded, “Plus. My uncle had a shop and he would let me work with him during the Summer when I was younger. Now shut up or I’ll give you a bowl cut.”

Bucky tensed up at the sound of razor being flicked on but Sam gently placed it against the base of Bucky’s neck and Bucky relaxed, leaning into Sam’s touch. He watched as Sam went in between using a comb and scissors and going back to the razor with different clippers on the end. Sam had taken some styling cream and combed Bucky’s hair over. Next he switched to a smaller razor and tended to the ever-growing beard Bucky had.

“A change will do you good.”

Bucky stood up and looked in the mirror and his eyes widened. The man he saw in the mirror was not the man he had seen multiple times before. It was someone new. Someone changed. Sam had salvaged some of the longer locks that Bucky still had to pull off a more modern look of the way Bucky used to wear his hair in the forties. His beard was trimmed just past some stubble on his face.

Bucky smiled.

“Looking good Barnes.”

“Thank you.” Bucky told him, eyes not leaving the mirror, “I don’t-,”

“It’s nothing man.” Sam said with a smile, leaning up against the door way with his arms across his chest, “Anything to help you. I’m the man for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Like I said,” Sam stated, “A change will do you good, Bucky Barnes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos are much appreciated!!!


End file.
